Bonaventure di Peraga, Blessed

BONAVENTURE DI PERAGA, Blessed. - Of the family of the counts of Peraga, from whose Roman stock the Badoer of Padua descended (and he himself was called of Padua), Augustinian, b. at Padua on 26 June 1332, d. at Rome, probably on 29 July 1385.

At the commission of Innocent VI, he founded the theological faculty of Bologna. Elected prior general in 1337, he followed, in the great schism, the party of Urban VI, who created him, on 28 Sept. 1378, cardinal deacon of the title of St. Cecilia. Legate in Poland, he there blessed the marriage of King Ladislaus and greatly strengthened Urban's party. Nuncio in Hungary, he reconciled King Sigismund with his people. Returned to Italy, he drew up, with a cardinalitial commission, the statutes of the theological faculties. He died murdered, while on his way to St. Peter's, by assassins of the tyrant of Padua, Francesco da Carrara, his relative, who did not forgive him his opposition to his attempts to violate the immunities of the clergy. He was buried in S. Agostino. The title of blessed, granted him within the Order, has not yet been sanctioned by the Church.

A correspondent and friend of Petrarch, from whom, on the occasion of the death of a brother, he received a consolatory epistle and whose funeral eulogy he delivered at Arquà, he enjoyed the deferential and fervent esteem of St. Catherine of Siena, who urged his cardinalitial election upon the Pontiff. B. di P. was the author of numerous ascetical writings that passed under the name of St. Bonaventure of Bagnorea: among them the Meditationes devotae in vitam Christi, which in their time had a vast influence on religious sentiment.

Pier Fausto Palumbo